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Ex-Google hiring committee member about job interviewing
- JabavuAdams 14y agoIf a lot of talented engineers from Microsoft and Amazon are having trouble in Google interviews, doesn't that indicate that Google is testing the wrong things?
- proksoup 14y agoAgreed. If writing a binary search tree thingamabob isn't relevant to the job they have 10 years experience in, why is the answer to that question so important at the goog? Why not ask questions that are relevant to the experience the candidate does have ...
- dhconnelly 14y agoBecause Google engineers don't seem to be hired for their experience with specific technologies/areas, but for their general competence. EDIT: Sorry, I really should have avoided making a comment at all. Google's hiring practices have been debated here a billion times and I can't really add anything that hasn't been said before.
- Daniel_Newby 14y agoYou cannot fake it with strong b.s. skills, and you cannot take credit for someone else's work.
- glaak 14y agoIt depends on how you look at it. Google wants people who have a strong understand of CS fundamentals (which includes knowing core data structures). Google also wants people who are good coders (which includes being able to translate an idea into code). A good coder who knows CS fundamentals should be able to do that. Thus, not knowing how to implement a binary search tree is revealing. And, really, the question is rarely "implement a binary search tree." It may, however, be to implement a binary search tree which support a getMedian() operation.
- Evbn 14y agoOf course, not knowing how to write a library quality Java w/generics implementation of a a search API on a non-search tree, on the whiteboard, as one of my interviewers once demanded, is something a bit else.
- almost_usual 14y agoIt shows motivation, there is competition that is willing to brush up on CS fundamentals, have a full time job, and practice interviewing.
- georgemcbay 14y agoEveryone at Google does great on these types of interviews -- ergo, the process must be perfect!
- ninjin 14y agoIf this is the case, I believe there is a word for this phenomena... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Confirmation_bias https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Confirmation_bias
- azth 14y agoFrom what I have been told, Google is willing to accept false negatives instead of admitting false positives.
- ajross 14y agoThe same is historically (and notoriously) true of Microsoft. I think the point is more that with this kind of screen there is just an inherently high false negative rate. That's a problem only if it's actually preventing you from hiring successfully.
- sseveran 14y agoI know of quite a few false positives at google.
- azth 14y agoI do/did too. It is not fool-proof, but their ratio seems to be lower than other places I have seen.
- rhizome 14y agoIs it that, or is it that they're big enough not to notice as much?
- hboon 14y agoCan you give examples? While I'm lucky to be way from the corporate world for the last few years, I'm still very interested in practises such as hiring and interviewing.
- bhylle 14y ago> If a lot of talented engineers from Microsoft and Amazon are having trouble in Google interviews, doesn't that indicate that Google is testing the wrong things? From my experience the average quality of engineer at Google is very high. I think it simply indicates a different hiring bar.
- nostrademons 14y agoIt's quite possible that the skills needed to succeed at Microsoft or Amazon are different from the skills needed to succeed at Google.
- hk_kh 14y agoBuy a book to get the illusion you'll work on Google. Sounds good!
- usea 14y agoSome may buy it for that reason. Are you implying it isn't likely to contain any useful information or advice on people who are actually interested in preparing for their interviews? Seems like a very pessimistic view.
- hk_kh 14y agoIf their dream is to work at a big corporation like Google, Amazon or Apple, they should be reading better books to enlighten up their dreams. edit: I see no mention on your post nor in the article about "dreams". Seems like I am feeling, indeed, pessimistic. woops.
- Evbn 14y agoCLRS is a better book for preparing for your interviews.
- pgbovine 14y agoprobably not, unless you're really good at filtering out what you need from 1312 pages. a more tightly-focused programming interview study guide is probably more beneficial if your only goal is prepping for these sorts of interviews.
- Evbn 14y agoI (re-)ead a dozen chapters and sketched solutions to almost every problem in my head, over a few weeks of evening and weekends, leading up to my best interview performances ever. YMMV, but I saw a correlation with obvious mechanism of causation. For the most coveted jobs, "fake books" don't cut it, you can't memorize every question you will see.
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- rckclmbr 14y agoShe's spot on. I consider myself a competent developer (6 years experience, "big fish in a small pond"), and I don't really interview often. I've interviewed at Google twice, the first time doing 2 phone interviews and a round of on-site interviews, and the second time not making it past the phone interview. I have prepared well for the interviews every time. I understand the algorithms, the data structures, and can program them on my own time no problem. But the second I'm in an interview setting, I lock up and can't think. I stumble across stupid thoughts (How many bits are in a byte? Oh yea, 8. But what about the 0th bit? What to do?!) and just work myself into a corner. All the while trying to seek approval from the interviewer. After about 2 minutes, I become a wreck and am hopeless. I also don't consider myself non-social, and deal with coworkers very well. I still don't understand what it is about the technical interview setting that makes me act like this.
- Tycho 14y agoI think people feel comfortable in settings where they draw on a concrete body of knowledge (like most normal job interviews). With programming though, everything is logic, being able to dynamically model rules and patterns in your head is everything. You build these models in your head, using your programming talent, but they are like volatile memory, and you always need to reconstruct them. So when you go into an interview, you have little concrete knowledge to lean on, so off the bat you lack confidence and get worked up because you don't realise why this should be.
- incision 14y agoFor what it's worth... I'm no rockstar, but I can honestly claim to be pretty comfortable in technical interviews. I chalk that comfort up to two main things. 1) A mentality that says something like... "I'm good, I'm solid. Fuck this guy." The point isn't the specific words, or expressing this outwardly, it's about getting into a mental state of calm confidence, pushing out the anxiety and concerning yourself only with the moment. 2) Talking with and being challenged by smart people on a regular basis. Ideally people who are smarter and/or more knowledgeable than yourself. I expect being the big fish in a small pond generally works against this.
- papaver 14y agoi think the best answer to any google interview question i didn't know is..... "i'd google it"! but seriously, why do i need to remember information about languages or algorithms i don't use daily? my memory is limited and i prefer it to be filled with the most useful information at the time.
- paranoiacblack 14y agoYou don't need to, but you should be able to recall them quickly when a problem starts to look like something already solved. There are a lot of developers who rewrite everything or whose lack of familiarity with the ins and outs of their language or how to apply simple algorithms leads them to come up with really complicated solutions to simple problems.
- hackinthebochs 14y agoThis mentality works in general, but there are drawbacks. A large part of your problem solving ability is unconscious. If you don't have critical pieces of information committed to memory, you're essentially creating a ceiling on the types of problems you're capable of solving.
- nydev 14y agoThis might be the most insightful comment I've read on HN. I think this is the point people either miss or don't bother to address when claiming that they can just search for "arcane" facts instead of memorizing them.
- Natsu 14y agoIn at least some cases, you can get by with having only the solution metadata committed to memory. For example, you might remember various data structures and their time complexity well enough to select the proper one, without necessarily being able to implement them all from memory.
- Evbn 14y agoBut you better remember how to verify your memory is correct, at least via research if not working it out yourself.
- jamesmiller5 14y agoI find the resume length suggestions interesting. The Microsoft representatives have told me to use a short one page resume. The Google representatives instead told me the exact opposite and said for me to put down everything relevant to the position regardless of length. I now have two resumes, a short one for on the floor career fairs and a multi-page that I submit online. [Edit grammar]
- mkhattab 14y agoPerhaps there is too much emphasis on the interview process. Why not use the contract-to-hire method? It could be a short duration spanning a few weeks. There are of course multiple drawbacks, but at least this method could help alleviate the problem of false negatives.
- jrockway 14y agoMany people don't want to be contractors. One of Google's draws is the benefits for full-time employees.
- emmapersky 14y agoIt takes many months to become a productive Engineer at Google, and in all of that time you are earning your full salary and being exposed to confidential information, so it's not realistic to try people out, as it would really only be valid after ramp up time; The challenge we face is figuring out if people will be successful here after they have picked up everything they need to know.
- Evbn 14y agoCollege interns do that. It is more awkward for industry hires.
- chollida1 14y agoThis has been covered multiple times. Good employees just won't do contract to hire. WHy give up a good job at MSFT or Goldman Sachs where you earn $150,000/year to do contract for hire for a couple of weeks with the chance you'll be out of a job? The upside is you have a job that pays about the same at a company with about the same "brand name" value, ie working at all 3 is about equivalent. The down side is you loose your job.
- curiousDog 14y agoIronically, her book won't get you through the google interview if you are a new college grad. It may have sufficient coverage for Microsoft/Amazon interviews but not google. From my experience the average google interview requires you to be so deeep into the algo/datastructure space, you should be able to code up the KMP algo off the top of your head. You have to be a topcoder with atleast 1200 rep or equivalent algo & coding skills. Coding speed also matters. You should be able to scribble Floyd warshall. Why this way? Well that's where google did most of their recruiting from back in the day. Anyone who says they got hired without this are either lying or got lucky in the interview process. Same goes for the new wave of startups in the bay area..facebook/palantir/quora etc. I was very much into the OS, compiler space in school and that was what I was interested in. Got an offer from msft, amzn but not google. So kids, read up on CLRS & the algorith design manual, solve every problem there & also create your account today on topcoder if you'd like that job at el goog. Any other book that says otherwise is equivalent to Linux programming for dummies or Complete C++ in 21 days.
- tlogan 14y agoAs far as I know this is also true for key divisions (divisions making secret sauce) of "unsexy" companies (ORCL, MSFT, AMZN, IBM, INTL, etc.). In other words, if you want to find a good job you need to be good.
- afhof 14y agoThis sounds like sour grapes to me. Getting an offer from amazon and microsoft aren't trivial, and from the looks on glassdoor the salary range is the same. Why aren't you happy?